The Unwilling Protagonist

Chapter 4: Power and Confidence: Strength Appears

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" Y/N screamed.

The mistress and all the other members of the temple shot their heads up in surprise. Whatever they expected from Y/N, the Hero of the Realm, it certainly wasn't this.

Y/N growled loudly and acted as if he was going to claw his own face off.

"Goddammit! Are you telling me that I need to live up to the expectations of the entire world by killing these Arcana things?!" Y/N shouted.

The mistress, still shocked by Y/N's outburst, tried to defuse the situation, "Y-Y/N, please, just listen. This is important. The fate of the world is-"

"I don't care about the fate of the world! I didn't ask for this! I don't want to be a hero! I'm not doing this!"

Y/N stormed out of the chapel immediately.

Opening Theme:

The girls of the temple were all shocked at how freely the Hero addressed their revered mistress. Miriam, for one, wasn't having any of it. She followed Y/N and Charlotte followed her. They managed to find Y/N on his way to the temple exit.

"I can't have anything in this world or the last one!" Y/N grumbled to himself, "I already had to deal with the wishes and wants of those two geezers, now I have to put up with some bullshit-ass prophecy. That's even worse! You can't hit a prophecy with a baseball bat!"

"Hey!" Miriam called out to Y/N.

Y/N turned to see Miriam, "Oh...what?" He asked.

"Neither I nor the other people of this temple appreciated how you addressed our mistress! I demand that you apologize to her!"

"Why should I do that?" Y/N snapped back, "If anything, she should be the one apologizing to me. It's because of her, I'm here. I'm not a hero; I'm not a savior; and I'm definitely not going to fulfill some stupid prophecy! I'm just going to live the way I see fit until I grow old and die, or something kills me!"

Charlotte was thoroughly intimidated by Y/N's outburst, but Miriam remained adamant.

"Are you saying that you'd put your happiness before other people's? How selfish of you!" Miriam retorted.

"Lady, with how much shit I've had to put up with before I was summoned here, I think I have some right to be selfish."

Miriam grit her teeth. Charlotte, gathering what confidence she had, walked up to Y/N and tried to reason with him.

"Y-Y/N...p-please...we need a hero to save this world so that its evil can be held at bay." Charlotte spoke.

"You still haven't told me why." Y/N replied.

"You want to know why? I'll show you why!" Miriam grabbed Y/N's arm and dragged him down the Temple halls all the way to the hospital wing. Charlotte and Miriam had avoided this place as often as they could recently. The sight of their former friends in a humiliating state of defilement pained them deeply. The incident from last chapter was not a unique occurrence; sometimes, clerics and priestesses would even die at the hands of their defilers.

Miriam opened the door and brought Y/N inside.

"This is why!" she said. She looked around; there were more girls present than before, all of which were being tended to. Unfortunately, no matter how hard the healers tried, mental wounds are nearly impossible to fix compared to physical wounds. Charlotte turned her head away.